Bellanka. Gear was not final answer, but it was an answer. And it seems some people are adamant of taking this away from others.

Ironically, while in the group/guild, I never blamed that person. I blamed the system that hid all the VP gear behind the reputation. I still dont think it's really that person's fault. The guy had lots of responsibilities in real life, couldn't do LFR as often as he wished, he couldn't do dailies as he wished, he really did not have the time to do much in wow other than raid. He was incredibly frustrated with his gear -- warriors are very gear dependent and he was missing huge chunks of crit from his gear because the gear was just not there.

He was not the only one with this issue however. But I'll say this... it drove them out of the game.

He half-jokingly put "dailiesdailiesdailiesdailiesdailiesdailiesdailiesdailiesdailiesdailiesdailiesdailiesdailies ad nauseum" as the reason why he quit wow when he cancelled his sub.

So tell me, how do I fix this?

Also, I'm still waiting on the answer about you guys buying VP gear. Have you guys done it or not?

Darielle wrote:"Outgearing" has to do with what the encounter is tuned for, not what it drops.

Part of the problem was we were not getting drops on the bosses we would kill. We got TWO elegon mounts but no 2-hand swords nor 1-Hand axes during all our time in MSV. Our two warriors and our dk were suffering with their dps big time.

Klaudandus wrote:He half-jokingly put "dailiesdailiesdailiesdailiesdailiesdailiesdailiesdailiesdailiesdailiesdailiesdailiesdailies ad nauseum" as the reason why he quit wow when he cancelled his sub.

So tell me, how do I fix this?

The problem wasn't gear. It was time investment. If he was playing at 100% of his class for his gear, then sure - the issue was gear gating, but if he wasn't it takes FAR less time to fix your playstyle than to do dailies.

Also, I'm still waiting on the answer about you guys buying VP gear. Have you guys done it or not?

I've LOVED killing Zandalari Warscouts and Warbringers in a group of friends and sending the Insignias to alts. My 85 Shaman is almost revered with August Celestials. My Alt Warrior finally got exalted with a few of the factions as well. I even got a nifty Triceratops mount out of it.

Hell, I didn't always get my Coins for loot tolls, either.

Didn't stop my team from killing 10 bosses heroic before the new tier.

Klaudandus wrote:He half-jokingly put "dailiesdailiesdailiesdailiesdailiesdailiesdailiesdailiesdailiesdailiesdailiesdailiesdailies ad nauseum" as the reason why he quit wow when he cancelled his sub.

So tell me, how do I fix this?

The problem wasn't gear. It was time investment. If he was playing at 100% of his class for his gear, then sure - the issue was gear gating, but if he wasn't it takes FAR less time to fix your playstyle than to do dailies.

Also, I'm still waiting on the answer about you guys buying VP gear. Have you guys done it or not?

I've LOVED killing Zandalari Warscouts and Warbringers in a group of friends and sending the Insignias to alts. My 85 Shaman is almost revered with August Celestials. My Alt Warrior finally got exalted with a few of the factions as well. I even got a nifty Triceratops mount out of it.

Hell, I didn't always get my Coins for loot tolls, either.

Didn't stop my team from killing 10 bosses heroic before the new tier.

I dont think he had a choice on how much he could play wow, being a parent.

How bout in the past? Wrath and cata, did you ever buy vp gear?

Also, i think part of your perception about gear is biased on the fact yourself don't seem to need it.

You are way ahead of the curve compared to the avg player. If i recall correctly, only half of all the raids did 9/16 and better.

Both sides of the argument appear to be seeing things very black and white, when the reality of raiding is far from that. The Methods and Paragons of the world can kill Lei Shen heroic with ilevels of 522-525, massive amounts of time investment and exceptionally high skill levels. More casual, less skilled guilds will inevitably need more gear to kill it - if their ilevel was locked at 522 for the next five months there's a good chance they would never kill it. And I'm talking about heroic guilds with people who have a pretty good idea how to play, but just can't perform at the 99% level consistently pull after pull.

I'll take an example of my warrior's guild compared with my warlock's guild. The warrior guild got 15/16h and had about 505 ilevel going into ToT, while the warlock guild got 3/16h and had about 497 ilevel going into ToT. The former raids 10 hours/week, the latter 6.

I learnt very little about the Horridon encounter in the warrior guild because we blew everything up before it became a problem, killed it on the third or fourth pull with a tank dead from halfway through the fourth door. We interrupted stuff occasionally, we dispelled what we could, we derped around and still found it easy simply because of gear.

In the lock guild, we just didn't produce the same numbers. If we weren't very rigorous about following a strict dps priority, we got overrun by effusions and wiped to poison bolt volleys ruining our day. We had to play in a much more co-ordinated way to produce a kill as a function of having 7-8 ilevels lower gear, and yes I'd say the average ability to realise the potential of the gear into numbers is probably a bit lower for the lock's guild than the warrior's, but if the ilevels had been reversed I'm sure the lock's guild would have strolled through the encounter.

If you can play your class at 100% of potential every single pull you need the absolute bare minimum of gear. If you can't, and let's be honest, very few people genuinely can, then you need a buffer to meet the dps requirements of the fight. Whether that's another 3-4 ilevels or another 15 depends on the skill levels of the raids involved, but to just discount gear as a necessity of raiding is taking a very blinkered view. You simply cannot seperate mechanics from gear, bigger numbers almost always make encounters easier.

However, it's just as blinkered to cling to gear as the panacea to cure all raiding ills though, and it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you allow the "OH GOD WE MUST HAVE MORE GEAR FOR THIS" mantra to become ingrained in your raiders' brains then they stop bothering looking for other explanations or ways to improve and wait for the nerfing effect of more gear, and when they stop seeking to improve their own skill, the only way they will get past encounters that they're struggling with is by getting more gear. Unfortunately this seems to have become a bit of a syndrome in the wider community, and it's really Blizzard's fault for re-casting people's expectations from tier to tier. By having the last few mickey mouse tiers Blizzard have trained their playerbase to expect a certain level of difficulty in their normal content, and the impulse, or even the ability, to analyse one's performance and find ways to improve has simply ceased to exist in a large portion of the playerbase, as they haven't needed to do so.

I hope Blizzard will choose to stick with the model of non-faceroll normals, and the playerbase at large will rise to the challenge, and actually improve, but I'm fairly sceptical given Blizzard's track record of making content more accessible simply through making it easier. If the end of tier numbers come out and show a decline in the raiding population it might simply not make businsess sense for them to repeat this particular experiment. And it's really tragic, because so many of these guilds that will struggle on things like Horridon or Garalon normal will do so not because they're terrible players, but because they don't quite grasp certain tactics or mechanics but they don't recognise that that is the problem.

Another anecdote - this weekend I pugged on an alt and joined a guild run that was progressing Horridon. The raid leader would yell and yell about unimportant stuff while completely failing to lead his raid in any meaningful way, so they managed to get through the poison door one in five tries, and never cleanly. The extent of his raid leading was to yell at people to click the dinomancer orb even after they'd clicked it, and to berate anyone who died from standing in something despite doing it himself more than a couple of times. After 20 wipes or so I mentioned that I had some suggestions that might help, and with some simple fixes such as actually marking the priority mobs, reminding people to position towards the next door, and to save burst cds for certain mobs, we were suddenly getting to the fourth door almost every pull. We eventually wiped to enrage because the numbers weren't quite high enough, but a bit longer and we'd have probably got it, just from some small changes in tactics. But how do you get someone who isn't used to thinking about encounters in those terms to start doing so, if it they don't realise that the problem is their approach rather than what they perceive as either lack of gear or incompetence from their raid?

Nooska wrote:I just want to say that Rhiannon really exemplified what I've been trying to say in regards to "skill" vs "gear" and where people fall on the curve.

Yeah, that was a great post.

I find the arguments about difficulty get unnecessarily worked up. There's obviously a continuous distribution of capability (that depends on various factors like skill, time investment, gear etc) and where Blizzard sets the line in terms of what is required for progression is somewhat arbitrary. It's a case of what the philosopher's call the "paradox of the heap": how many grains of sand constitute a heap? Should Garalon's HP be 10 million higher or lower? Who's to say? It's a judgement call.

People want the line to be drawn at what suits their raid's capabilities: top end what a higher bar; low end, a low bar. That's fair enough, but I find it hard to fault GC's principle in Cata that if significant portions of raiders get stuck on a boss, repeatedly wiping for several weeks, then it might need adjusting. Blizzard want to get a large proportion of the player base progressing through normal and that seems reasonable, both commercially and "for the greater good". It would be good if Blizzard can achieve their goal without the regular nerfs of Cata, as those felt demotivating, but that would require very smart initial tuning by Blizzard.

I know from personal experience that the Firelands nerf was a tremendous boon to the two struggling guilds I was in. One, long suffering, could finally progress beyond Shannox. The other, which had gone defunct, re-emerged from the ashes and started raiding again. The recent 10% nerf was probably what allowed the two guilds to progress beyond Elegon and Garalon respectively.

I think it may be too soon to complain about T15. For players still progressing in T14, I am not sure they should be spending nights wiping on Horridon. It probably makes more sense to finish T14: it may be less frustrating and should be more lucrative in gear. At least that's what we're doing - it's not fast, we tend to progress only one boss per night and only raid once a week. Now we're past Garalon (killed Un'sok last week), I'm hoping we speed up a bit as TES always felt manageable in LFR. (Lei Shi may be a swine, though.)

Last edited by econ21 on Thu Mar 28, 2013 12:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

our guild hasn't even attempted to get to horridon yet...buuuut...that's more about us trying to get more gear througj TOES and HOF. we basically didn't raid at all for 6 weeks or longer after the guild i was in fell apart. it formed and then we were behind everyone else.

the nerf to hof and terrace helped us move faster no doubt...but before the nerf...we were on the queen and working on downing her.

anyways...i've enjoyed the raids so far. our old guild died on elegon because our dps wasn't that great, people couldn't kill their sparks and general dumb. sort of reminds me of bc a little...like, it's less forgiving.

Both sides of the argument appear to be seeing things very black and white, when the reality of raiding is far from that. The Methods and Paragons of the world can kill Lei Shen heroic with ilevels of 522-525, massive amounts of time investment and exceptionally high skill levels. More casual, less skilled guilds will inevitably need more gear to kill it - if their ilevel was locked at 522 for the next five months there's a good chance they would never kill it. And I'm talking about heroic guilds with people who have a pretty good idea how to play, but just can't perform at the 99% level consistently pull after pull.

Correct, but these other guilds are not going to get to Heroic Lei Shen next week; they'll get there after months of farming.

Just like the guilds that are currently going through T15 Normal are not really expected to even get TO Lei Shen until about a month before 5.4. LFR won't fully activate until the end of April because Blizzard doesn't expect some of the mid-Heroic raiders to finish Lei Shen off before then.

When talking Garalon's requirement, I can guarantee you that most of the guilds who "struggled" had the complete reversal to this on gear:"I'll take an example of my warrior's guild compared with my warlock's guild. The warrior guild got 15/16h and had about 505 ilevel going into ToT, while the warlock guild got 3/16h and had about 497 ilevel going into ToT. The former raids 10 hours/week, the latter 6. "

It's why looking at objective requirements such as give a better picture:"Council's requirements aren't high either. Before they were nerfed, it took something along the lines of an average 90k dps within a 4 minute ish timespan (3*25%*90million health + 90 million health + a couple of million for Loa Spirits - also assuming 3-heal) to do the thing that made the fight TRIVIAL (Kill Sul before he's empowered, or right as he Empowers).

For a 496 raid? Considering you can multidot and cleave to your heart's content? That's not high.Now it requires around 80k dps. This is still not massively higher than what people could do in 463's here."

To give a better understanding of "what the acceptable bar" is, that kind of objective requirement gives a strong indication. Obviously, if the raid had to perform at 99% level consistently to get things down, it would be overtuned. This? It's around the 60% mark, and less is actually required to pull off the fight (that was for Sul dead before he Empowers at all). That's pretty descriptive of "average".

The increase in Garalon's enrage from 7 min to 12 min stands out. I'm hoping the adjustments to Horridon give my guild a leg up. It may be coincidence, but after last week's raid with no progress kills, stuck on Horridon, the sign ups have dropped off and it's not clear we will have 10 raiders show up for the next few weeks.

Last edited by econ21 on Fri Apr 12, 2013 4:18 am, edited 1 time in total.

The increase in Garalon's enrage from 7 min to 12 min stands out. I'm hoping the adjustments to Horridon give my guild a leg up. It may be coincidence, but after last week's raid with no progress kills, stuck on Horridon, the signs have dropped off and it's not clear we will have 10 raiders show up for the next few weeks.

we wiped on it for 2 week+ cause we never had 10 real readeurs available at same timealways 1to2 dps toooo low to allow us to execute to the end the strat#1 - our worst unlucky folks still having pvp weapon, or bad luck with T14 tokenproblem is that the vast majority no longer is interested to go again in T14

#2 - recruiting PU is becoming a nightmarespamming /2 for hours, (even with 1-2days in advance) : no choice, no answer. the few we found were total catastrophic... (even with at least 2/12 xp, 500+ilv : dps were all 60-80k...)for the laught, we were looking for a dps with BL, found a hunter (ilv 504, xp 2/12), asked it to go BeastMaster even if he dislike, did 60kdps for 1 hour try, always required our Brez joker in the first minut... the laught come when our SP switched to his alt mage, and allowed the hunt to go back to his main spe SV.5try later : wooping 70kdps!!! recount showing 1% dmg with explosive shots..(main shoot.. should be around 20-30%)

so here our story of a medium raid on a medium serveur (was in top 5 for several exp.)-no recrut available(while i started campaign for 1month+...i feel alone in space)-no good PU avaialable

the other thing we noticed is also the disparition of alt raids : we are several with alt and used to raid outside as a PU from time to time. we are now unable to find average raid. our /2 is a pure desert...

wowprogress rank 120 guild in T14we are now 60 ranked raids in T15...

some says that LFR is enought for more and more people (while at the same time more and more people get upsed with bad mentality in LFR...)

i'm even more convinced the difficulty between LFR/normal/HM is total garbage. i don't know how it impact subscriptioni can't stop because i'm a GM... but i'm starting switch back to SC2 during leasure time

Sounds like you need a server transfer if you aren't getting the recruits you need. But it also may simply be there are not as many "hardcore" or "really good" players anymore.

What you may not realize is that what you are talking about with "bad" players doing "60-80k" dps happens at every other level of guilds, just the numbers and expectations change. Had one in my raid last night that won't be invited back, because dps was way below what should be expected. Different number range, but same problem.

Amirya wrote:... because everyone needs a Catagonskin rug.

twinkfist wrote:i feel bad for the Mogu...having to deal with alcoholic bears.

I'm about to beat my head into a wall - two more weeks and we're still 4/16 T14.

The raid team I'm in is still 10/16 T14, raiding one night a week for 3 hours. Early on the issues were a lot of new toons, people that hadn't raided before, and some undergearing. But last night on Ambershaper again, we had a few really low people, doing 40kish dps on Ambershaper that should have been doing at least ~60k dps based on their gear (a mash macro would have been a major improvement for them). One in particular was failing at every mechanic. I watched this person running away from a living amber, doing a FULL LAP AROUND THE ROOM. /facepalm. Worse yet this person was a hunter, who apparently couldn't pet-tank that living amber. /sigh.

Biggest problem now is we always have a churn of 3-4 new people, so things never quite settle in.

I'm quite happy with the raid leadership and the core group, but those on the edges are really causing problems.

Amirya wrote:... because everyone needs a Catagonskin rug.

twinkfist wrote:i feel bad for the Mogu...having to deal with alcoholic bears.

I'm simply at a loss with my guild. We did 3 hours of wipes on Vizier last night - people simply couldn't avoid Attenuation, and the healing seemed a little weak on the tries where we lost at most one person to the disks.

I don't believe it's DPS issue (other than not running the spiral correctly) - we're getting only a single F&V and Convert on those platforms, and 2 Attunes.

I'm (nominally) leading the group. Is there anything in particular I can do extra to try to help people do better?

(Note that kicking people from the raid simply isn't an option - we've had exactly 10 on for the past three weeks.)

Most people want the wealth produced by a society with limited government distributed to them more generously by bigger government.

People have to learn how to move, and find a good healer to give the healers tips. For the movement it's all about camera angle. Other thing on that fight is people need to keep their defensive cooldowns and fears on cooldown.

Amirya wrote:... because everyone needs a Catagonskin rug.

twinkfist wrote:i feel bad for the Mogu...having to deal with alcoholic bears.

Well for discs, we used to have a priest who would die continuously to them. During that phase I'd usually try to put sacred shield and hand of sacrifice on her. Sometimes it helped, sometimes it didn't, but it's at least something you can do. Plus I think the discs are physical right? Could always bop two people whom you know are especially bad (I've never actually done that, so not sure if the discs simply bypass bop).

Edit: Another thing with the discs... the closer into melee people are, the easier it is to dance around in the spiral. The further out you get, the more the pattern bounces back in on itself (and the further you have to run to complete a circle). Might want to advise people to move into melee range during that part.

theckhd wrote:Fuck no, we've seen what you do to guilds. Just imagine what you could do to an entire country. Just visiting the US might be enough to make the southern states try to secede again.

halabar wrote:Noo.. you don't realize the problem. Worldie was to negative guild breaking energy like Bolvar is to the Scourge. If Worldie is removed, than someone must pick up that mantle, otherwise that negative guild breaking energy will run rampant, destroying all the servers.

After a night of thinking how to fool-proof LFR Lei Shen, I'm convinced he will eventually not be nerfed hard.Reason? His AoE damage when not near a pillar scales *veeeeeeeery* slow which means you can actually keep him between pillars for extended amounts of time.

I'm guessing the accepted LFR tactic will become:

a) Tank near Boucing Ball pillar. Move him in for a few seconds, than out again for 20-35 seconds. Repeat ad nauseam and tank swap when decap (or not, if your tank is strong). You shouldn't have to change pillars until intermission.b) Grab the Balls, dodge the Struck.c) intermission 1: spread and grab balls, stack for everything elsed) phase 2: repeat phase 1 at another platforme) intermission 2: just stay stackedf) phase 3: dodge stuffz.

When that day comes, seek all the light and wonder of this world, and fight.

Sagara wrote:After a night of thinking how to fool-proof LFR Lei Shen, I'm convinced he will eventually not be nerfed hard.Reason? His AoE damage when not near a pillar scales *veeeeeeeery* slow which means you can actually keep him between pillars for extended amounts of time.

I'm guessing the accepted LFR tactic will become:

a) Tank near Boucing Ball pillar. Move him in for a few seconds, than out again for 20-35 seconds. Repeat ad nauseam and tank swap when decap (or not, if your tank is strong). You shouldn't have to change pillars until intermission.b) Grab the Balls, dodge the Struck.c) intermission 1: spread and grab balls, stack for everything elsed) phase 2: repeat phase 1 at another platforme) intermission 2: just stay stackedf) phase 3: dodge stuffz.

I just want to say I'm glad I wasn't drinking while reading these, or I'd need a new monitor.

In the massive 1 time I ran him (though it took a pile of attempts), it seemed that either the healers weren't ready for the AOE when the tanks took their time dragging him or the spread/stack mechanics weren't being followed well. I imagine those will improve with time.

benebarba wrote:In the massive 1 time I ran him (though it took a pile of attempts), it seemed that either the healers weren't ready for the AOE when the tanks took their time dragging him or the spread/stack mechanics weren't being followed well. I imagine those will improve with time.

I'm at the point with it that for my hunter, unless it looks like a group has a good chance to do it, I'm not going to stick around (and once I get the shoulder and head tokens, I won't even run that wing). Not worth the pain for that one trinket.

Sadly on my priest (and likely eventually on my lock) I'll be running it over and over because there are quite a few things I'll need from him (weapon, offhand, trinket...).

Amirya wrote:... because everyone needs a Catagonskin rug.

twinkfist wrote:i feel bad for the Mogu...having to deal with alcoholic bears.